China Arrests 7 in New Effort to Stop Tibetan Self-Immolations

BEIJING — The authorities in northwest China have detained seven people they say organized the fatal self-immolation of a Tibetan villager in October, photographed his burning body and then sent the images abroad.

The arrests, announced Tuesday by Xinhua, the official news agency, suggest that the Chinese government is increasing the use of its newest strategy against the politically motivated suicides in Tibetan areas of China: punishing friends and relatives of those who self-immolate.

The Xinhua report said a Tibetan advocacy group in India convinced the villager, Sangye Gyatso, a 27-year-old father of two, that self-immolation was a “heroic deed” and that it would improve his family’s standing.

A spokesman for the group, the Tibetan Youth Congress, called the assertions “ridiculous.”

With the accumulated toll of self-immolations approaching 100, Beijing has been scrambling to find effective deterrents to such acts, which began in 2009 as a desperate attempt to publicize what many Tibetans consider heavy-handed Chinese policies. In the early months of the crisis, officials sought to demonize self-immolators as terrorists or mentally deranged people. The authorities also locked down the most restive towns and monasteries, preventing monks from leaving or foreign journalists from entering.

Such measures appear to have done little to quell the protests, prompting officials to try new tactics. In Tongren County, in Qinghai Province, the authorities recently issued new regulations that permanently revoke public benefits for the families of self-immolators and cancel government-financed projects in their hometowns. If monks or nuns visit the home of a self-immolator, their monasteries are to be shut down as punishment.

In recent weeks, more than a dozen people across the region have been charged with inciting self-immolations or accused of spreading information about them via text message or e-mail. Last month, eight people were detained on accusations of trying to publicize a self-immolation in Luchu County in Gansu Province.

In October, four Tibetans in Sichuan Province were given sentences of from 7 to 11 years; two were convicted of encouraging their friend to self-immolate, and the other two for leaking news of it to “outside contacts.”

In the most recent case in Gansu Province, Xinhua said one of the seven detained men, a Buddhist monk named Khyi Gyatso, had joined the Tibetan Youth Congress in Dharamsala, India, after escaping in 2000. But the monk, Xinhua said, stayed in touch with his boyhood friend Sangye Gyatso and persuaded him to “contribute to the cause of Tibetans” by setting himself on fire.

Xinhua said Sangye Gyatso — whom it described as a convicted thiefand a chronic womanizer — fell under the monk’s sway. He later told three friends about the time and place of his self-immolation so they could take photographs and share them with overseas groups, including representatives of the Dalai Lama.

Tenzin Norsang, joint secretary of Tibetan of Youth Congress in Dharamsala, said the group had no connection to Sangye Gyatso’s death.

“Those who are self-immolating have been living under Chinese rule for more than 50 years — they don’t need anyone to tell them what to do,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: China Arrests 7 in New Effort to Stop Tibetan Self-Immolations. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe